They Think We Are Stupid!

Rick Reed looks normal enough when he climbs up before a tour group at Cricket Hill, a New Jersey microbrewery. Reed, who’s Cricket Hill’s brewmaster, explains that in order to have a tasting at the brewery, you have to have a tour, “and to be a tour, someone has to say something.” Then Reed explodes into a feet-pounding seizure of a diatribe against the beer industry: Videotaped and posted on YouTube, the six-minute rant is now notorious in craft beer circles. It’d be a good King Lear audition. Here’s a sample:

What else do they tell us? They tell us that Coors Light is frost-brewed. What does that mean? That means nothing—IT MEANS NOTHING. It’s brewed at 212 degrees just like every other beer.